We like to say that chimpanzees are warlike. Instead of having sex to make peace, they hunt down their enemies and patrol their border areas much like armed guards patrolling the ruins of a prized museum. Upon closer inspection, though, we’ve found that wars and human incursion - no arms for that which they cannot resist - have led to the chimpanzee wars. Limit their territory, start living where they live, and they turn on each other.

Humans are very much the same, I think. Marginalized communities like mine are under attack right now and we’re setting up purity tests all around us, a lot like border guards, to limit who can come in and who belongs in the wasteland. We even hunt down and attack those who’ve transgressed our rules of what mustn’t be said and how to voice dissent. Resist, but only in one specified way with pre-printed words. It reminds me of 1984.

I was just asked when I was leaving after quoting Green Day’s “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA” around the Census being armed by Border Patrol to identify people we deem illegal here in the US. At first, I wanted to just reply lol, but the binary of love it or leave it required more than that. Then I remembered Harvey Milk’s speech - “Come to San Francisco? Or stay and fight.” I thought of “I’ll stay and fight, like a patriot” was a good response, but someone else beat me to it. A response so I don’t have to say much else.

I’m disturbed, though, by my recycling of slogans. Am I just as bad as The Party, simply repurposing things at hand to lob little bombs at my snarky targets? I’m not really a fighter. I think, and it saddened me that we killed our latest target of border ire. Not because he was a great guy. Just because, well, he was killed. Killing anyone is a sad occasion to me because we all have families, we all possess a divine spark that is not our human right to extinguish. Never.

I want to say something original here, but it seems like everything has already been said. I find myself lobbing makeshift grenades at human targets.

Am I any better than a chimpanzee?

I bought you a Wookie mug for Christmas. I intend to fill it with tiny Charleston Chews, preferably frozen, because the corndogs will just get soggy in the time waiting for us to open our presents.

I come to your house - our old house - and we talk about my Kitty that you sheltered for four months until I could get my own place for Her. How she loved on you and hated your kids. How she sprints to the door when I get home after a day of working, volunteering, shopping. Just like a dog. One of your younger ones cried angry tears when I took her home to my place. She thought Little Kitty was hers! Stood there crunched up, not letting me touch her. I could relate because I loved Kitty too.

I look at the bookshelves that take up a wall of our dining room - books that have been meticulously taken down, moved to another wall, and then reassembled just as Dad had them. A memory of Dad, one that threatened to suffocate me when I was younger, towering in your green room. Little toys and your childrens’ books litter the shelves, adding a touch of domesticity that dad’s rarely had.

We talk about stuff we buy - you mainly, these days. The Disney Movie Club, the pins from Disneyland with your Rebel Army emblems, stuff that you’re gonna take offroading tomorrow, come rain or come shine.

I feel a little like I don’t have much to say, for I haven’t bought much and I shouldn’t be buying much anyway. Mainly Christmas gifts and holiday decor for a party that you’re invited to and have pledged your attendance for.

Your wife, my Sister bys our hearts as much as by marriage, is so much easier to talk to. We have shared pasts - feeling like outsiders among our peers and hurt in our 20′s. You, on the other hand, you I befriended throughout my childhood and youth. The kids who didn’t fit in because exuberance wasn’t wanted in our accelerated classrooms - you were my best friend once, again, and over again. Bri, one of my besties like You, Bri Williams, stole some of her mom’s jewelry as a parting gift for me when she was being literally kicked out of our arts program that 6th grade. I can’t imagine how that felt......what she did to soothe herself I’ll never know.

Thankfully, your 6th grade teacher appreciated you. She sent you on errands when you just had to stand up. She liked your creativity. I read a story that Mom keeps in the memory cabinet from that time that you wrote for Mrs. Alwinger - all spaceships and heroes and furry aliens.

I know you like Star Wars over Star Trek, milk over coffee, and kids the world over.

You’re a terrific father and my brother. I just sometimes wish I knew more.

Oh Beth, I miss you. Sometimes. Our separation was so complete that I still feel a distance when I look at your photo. You might wonder, then, why I bought the dragonfly and bicycle pillows that adorn my living room. And why there’s a little shrine to you on my north wall. I suppose it’s ultimately to Love.

We loved each other even though we didn’t know how to do it properly. I don’t take you or Charlie for granted now because I know how soon Love, and Life, can vanish. I bawled on your birthday the year after we separated because, again, Love. Love intertwined with pain until you asked me to literally cut you out of a photo I had up on OkCupid. Something shifted in me then. This best friend of mine was separated by a moat, and I wandered on, and away.

What’s funny is that I immediately found a bff who didn’t work out. You and I had boundaries, probably too many. This person had absolutely none and entertained the idea that I was in love with her. Graphic photos of her started to appear in my chatbox, and eventually I unfriended, blocked, almost ghosted her. She had crossed my last boundary, shocked me one final time. Still, I feel sorry for her - which is different from what I feel for you. For you there’s an absence even though I surround myself with mementos of you.

It’s funny but what I can say about us is that your boyfriend Edy has now become my family. In losing you, in reading Ecclesiastes from The Message bible at your memorial, in reaching out to my long-lost friend Edy, in getting a huge hug from your sister after my Dad died, I feel peace, and Love.

I still miss you, and I think I always will. My new, and hopefully lifelong, bff, is so much like you. Brown hair, red face, “the diabetes,” everything. Definitely more of an extravert, but he reminds me to never take Love for granted.

I’m buying him a Christmas stocking this year, sparkly like him, to be stuffed with bath bombs and yummy things.

I’ll always remember you. You were my first taste of Love outside of my family. You will always be missed.

We did the best we could, didn’t we?

An Authentic Life

Dan Jimenez counts his blessings. He was married for 20 years, he manages a successful jewelry chain - Prestigo Jewelers next to JC Penny’s in Stockton and at seven other locations throughout California - and he has come out as himself.

When I first meet Dan at downtown Starbuck’s, he is dressed in a summery blue polka dot button down shirt and cool bermuda shorts. Jewels - not so much unlike those of his childhood idol Grace Kelly - sparkle below his chin. A look that makes people smile.

But this isn’t for show. It is consequence of Dan being himself, the best possible version of himself that he can be.

Early in life, Dan hid who he was. He lived a double life and promised his younger sister Lupe that he would never sleep with men. She caught him at his family’s house on Robert’s Island with a man in his thirties when he was just 16 or 17. She freaked out, whipped out the tequila, and called his older siblings - 2 girls and 3 boys. They all cried, hashed it out, and finally Dan caved.

His sister was one of his best friends. He didn’t want to hurt her. So he promised her - no more men.

Life went on and time crawled on in the islands.

Dan - who has an ease that makes others eager to listen to him - kept charming girls as his sweethearts. But six weeks after his encounter with another man he said to himself, “I can’t live like this anymore,” and snuck off to Stockton. He headed to Eden Park to meet boys and to The Gay 90’s across the street, the boldly-named first gay bar and safe space in Stockton. An older boy befriended him, took him around to various LGBT/gay hangouts in the area, and that was that.

Except that it wasn’t: Dan still lived a double life.

His compromise for his sister took its toll.

Dan continued to draw inspiration from women but concealed his gayness. He dressed well, but the clothes he wore didn’t always express his true self. He let himself be wined and dined by glamorous dames but always kept one true sweetheart for himself on the side. A boy, and later a man, that he would spoil with treasures. To these young men, and to himself, he said, “I cleanse myself, because I do all of this for you.”

Finally, when Dan was 36, he had enough. He was going to be himself with everyone, everywhere.

And that changed things. No more masks, and no more shame.

He realized that all of his spirit-draining efforts to be accepted by others were responses to his own imagination. “There’s a fine line between how you’re portraying yourself to be accepted by others and how you see yourself. It’s from your own eyes but not their eyes. I came out and said, ’I can’t live like this anymore - I’m gonna be me and I’m gonna be fabulous.”

Since then, Dan has lived a fabulous life. He has become a leader in the LGBTQ+ community. He regularly gets invited to weddings by the grateful couples he assists in his management position at Prestigo. He has been open to receiving the gifts the world has given him, and he has loved.

Dan had a near-death experience once when he was visiting the Grand Mansion Inn. He was in a convertible accident and he tried to help his friends but his skull ended up being crushed “into a hundred pieces” by the convertible mechanism. Hours later, at UC Davis Hospital, he heard the medical staff and his friends around him announce, “He’s gone. Call it.” But he was alive, and he felt himself floating in the air, with fabric spiralling and unravelling all around him. He came to life, recovered, and now surrounds himself with fabrics that he finds beautiful.

This is a reminder for Dan of second chances.

Give him an old piano and he’ll make a bar out of it. Then he’ll send it home to its original owner. Like him, those things simply need to be salvaged, remade, and given a second chance. These things Dan understands.

The Be-Attitud

blessed are the gender outlaws

those born with violence on the horizon

and those who narrowly, purposefully avoid it through

restricted movements and lost opportunities

Blessed are those who are murdered, those who are killed, and those who are so abused that they leave this world far too early

for you have lived your truth boldly

and your life and memory are your testament

however brief and brilliant you lived on this earth

.

blessed are the ones who are themselves

despite danger. The price you pay for authenticity

is dwarfed by the confidence of your honesty.

blessed are the flawed

meaning blessed are all of us

who make mistakes, try faithfully to correct our missteps, and to

be persons of integrity in this challenging world.

we do our best, we miss relationships, and we build glimmering

castles with our friends and our other loved ones in this

place where cement stacks itself upon the earth.

blessed are the allies, the understanding, those who see the

best in us and others

for you will never be without a bed to sleep in or bread

and sustenance at dinner time

for you are beloved by all of us.

blessed are the family who change

Who do their best to understand

who keep their perspective but widen it to include others

who have surprised you

for love is your song and you are fully seen

blessed are the strivers, the wanters, the creatives and all of us who just try to be good people in our communities and relationships

we shall build the land that we are now working on

blessed are all, for all strive, all work, and all want of something

blessed

blessed

blessed are all of us

for all that we call Holy loves us back;

may we live in love and share it with all among and beyond us.

“So you think I come by this naturally?” Germaine asked. “Nooo, it’s by a gentle touch and a steady hand. I’m not just some fuckwit, you know.”

“Did I ever say you were?” Don said.

“Not in so many words. And yet, in small, precise ways. The pitying look you gave me when I was about write to Grandma. Or the way you’d hold your palm on my right shoulder. It was always just a little too firm.”

Germaine’s hands were in her lap, gently cradling the baby bird that Don had spotted earlier that day. A blue jay without its noisy caw.

“Just let me do something cool with you,” Don said. “Like we used to, you know, when we were younger.” He hesitated at the banality of the next phrase but forced it out anyway: “For, for old-time’s sake.”

“And just what did we do so well?” Her pupils turned into tiny pinpricks, before blood was evacuated from a still-warm finger. “We never did anything, Don!”

“Except fuck.”

“That’s true.” Germain tapped the injured bird’s head at this.

“But I’m guessing it’s too late for that.”

“That, and my menses has arrived, and I don’t want to risk the chance of another Germaine-Don at this point in time.”

Thank God for that, thought Don. Although, at the same time, his heart yearned for another child. By all rights not Germaine’s but someone who could come home to him at the end of a boring school day, someone to play baseball with. Why the fuck he was thinking of more children while he was imprisoned in a basement with his deranged ex was anyone’s guess. Probably their easy banter - that’s what they did.

“Well, we’ll have to see about that,” Germaine said. “For now, let’s just be friends and then find figure out what to do. You hungry?”

Blank stare.

“Really, Don. It’s been five hours since I’ve found you here at the house. Your bookshelf is fuller than your refrigerator. You must be interested in some kind of nourishment. When is the last time you had a home-cooked meal?”

It was true! In the five years since she had been confined to the mental hospital - way out in India, where such things still exist - Don had made ramen. Ramen for breakfast, ramen for lunch, and ramen as a supper apertif. What about Little Red? She, for one, had described it as her dad’s running joke: He don’t cook. Dad microwaves.

Being an English major, Don always was appalled at Little Red’s coarse use of language. She got it from her grandmother, the only one in the whole family to step in when the little thing was for sale practically at his house. If he could’ve put up a Craigslist ad for her, he would’ve.

But since then he’d matured. Don wanted kids now, and someone to call his

own. Someone to teach diction to even though he knew that Red and her grandma’s were perfectly good, just backward.

Reading his mind, Germaine interjected. “You want a kid so you can control it, Don. You neglect yourself physically, but you put all of your energy into others. You’re creating a golden camel in our daughter.”

“You mean a golden calf?”

“No, a camel. They can be starved. They’re hardier…. and haughtier.”

Don looked at the poor little bird. Was that what his deranged ex was planning to make for supper? Was Germaine telelpathic now, he wondered? She had always had gifts, like choosing what to wear from a lineup of perfectly good outfits just so she could match her best friend Felice on Fridays. Oooh how that pissed Felice off! And the way her obsession with home and hearth, the real heart of Germaine, wound up killing their relationship. She never measured up to her own perfectionism, just a hussy with a gift of gab, was Germaine’s own tagline, if there ever were one.

“So, what’ll it be?” Germaine asked again. An unsteady but still coy smile tugged at her lips.

For awhile I was obsessed with being homeless.

Alone in my cold apartment, which was really just a converted utility closet, I wondered what it would be like to live on the street.

In some ways, I was acknowledging the shaky ground I was on - barely employed, and barely scraping together enough to pay the $350 a month PLUS HEATING in the dead of winter in Portland, 2010. Sometimes I wonder what I'll do in 2020, the ten-year anniversary of my jaunt up there. Will I relive some of the trauma that I suffered there? Will I simply shrug it off and press on? Only time, and my resolve, which is pretty strong right now, will tell.

Anyway, homelessness. I wanted to reach out but I was shy. Pile the trouble with the cat box in the unventilated rooms, and I was depressed, despairing. I called my parents and Beth daily. I listened to Catholic Radio at night and sang along to the RENT songs I remembered in my head, holding onto the things that made me happy and that hurt less.

That's when I found Leslie Feinberg. It was perfect timing - at the big PSU library on the top of the hill. I had to request their novel from a public library in nearby Vancouver, and at the end I couldn't fling myself onto the light rail another time to return it. Put it in the return slot of the library on 87th and something instead. But Leslie, in those dark nights, kept me company. I devoured Stone Butch Blues, lingered on its tales of Jess, the protagonist that was a melange Leslie Feinberg and a fictional character. The most poignant moment was this - "Do you know if I'm a boy a girl?" This after Theresa, Jess' lover, leaves them for a butch who hasn't transitioned. This must've been Leslie's dying question, asked with such tenderness in their work that it made me cry.

Jess paid for their transition. They regularly got attacked in Buffalo and nestled their apartment keys in their fist like ninja stars on the New York City subway, ready to gouge an attacker's eye out if it meant returning to their flat in one piece.

I guess I paid for my transition, too. In Portland, I lived east of 87th, daring the city to harass me. 87th Avenue was the point of no return for the city's queers. Only crazy people lived beyond that imaginary divider. But I looked at rooms - apartment rooms, basement rooms, Victorian perches, west of there. They seemed dank and strange. Like a place that I wouldn't mind visiting for a day but not one I'd want to stay in. I looked at the lion-tamers and queers who looked like me and thought, "These aren't my people."

Sure, they were queer, but they had a different feel to them - practiced words and ideas peppered with sarcasm. I felt like an alien around them.

When I saw the little converted motel at the triangle past Foster and the Green Line, I knew I was home. The ramshackle homes reminded me of Cherokee Lane back in Stockton. The people were dressed in jeans and hoodies even on the cold November day I happened upon that neighborhood. I was closer to the Trees! And by those, I mean the redwoods that stood along the border between Portland and Gresham.

Really, I was trying to find Home. And maybe my recreation of Stockton in that foreign land presaged my return to Stockton the next year before its first snowmelt.

iI walked to Sellwood along the bike path behind my home a few times. I walked towards Gresham, too - little chirps of frogs from the teaching farm peppering my footfalls in the evening. I walked up the hill in the outer park in Northeast Portland to be with the Trees - and saw a toddler jabbering away so happily that it made me laugh. Smile at his parents, eyes meeting eyes, and move on.

The Nurturing Darkness - Sermonette

So, today I’m going to share with you a verse from the Bible, Luke 8:15, which is taken from the New Revised Standard Version. I changed the word “soil” to “earth” for thematic reasons. In this verse, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, or close friends and students. Here we go:

But as for that in the good earth, there are ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.

The context of this verse is that Jesus is talking about how to listen to teachings, but there are echoes of one of the first Creation stories in the Old Testament here. First, Tova is the word used here for Good when Jesus is talking about the Good Earth. It shares the same root that is in Genesis 1 when God declares Creation to be not just good, but “VERY Good!”, according to the Biblical Scholar Donovan Ackley III. Second, the word for earth is Adhamh, translated in present day English to the male name Adam. That’s because Adhamh literally means earthling or earth-being - gender-neutral. So, in a way, Jesus is instructing his disciples to be like the Good Earth - like the Original Creation from which they came.

Ackley also emphasizes that, in Genesis 1, God brooded over Creation like a bird caring for its offspring, preoccupied with raising its small family until they could fly on their own. But it’s a fact of life that not all birds fly and not all ground is fertile. Jesus then goes into a this/good that/bad mode, but really, I think it’s beautiful - and relatable - that we contain the seeds of the origins of the universe within us, and that we can return to that nutrient-rich state of being if only we make ourselves so. And part of that can be through listening.

The Nurturing Darkness - the cross-section of a seed is on the front page of today’s Order of Service. When I think of that image, I think of both warmth and vulnerability. I imagine the warm earth embracing the seed just as it needs to be embraced, like a hug! Soil wrapped snugly around the little germ of life, ready to give it what it needs. Not so different from an eagle parent providing for its young. The seed, gradually reaching out for more - more discovery, more life, more growth. And growth is scary! But in the right environment, it happens, organically. Teachers know this. The earth and the seed, almost symbiotically responding to one another like a gestating parent responding to the baby they’re carrying inside of them. Listening is a beautiful method for returning to the original state of Creation. Especially when we remember that, in the Hebrew Bible, the earth was formed into being by its Creator's speaking.

In the coming darkness, I encourage you to listen. Listen to what needs to grow within you, and listen to who or what you need to nurture. As you do so, you might experience discomfort, but with your listening, you’ll be bringing Love. And in that, you’ll be making things new. Even if your process is the timeless process of Creation.

My piece on The Interfaith Observer blog

Dwelling Within the Sacred

by Sam Allen

Only silence remains. Because I have to listen to him - I have to listen to the silence. I have to experience him.

                              - Interviewee in “I Like the Way You Dream,” from 1 Giant Leap

There are some things that are sacred in every person’s life. Agnostic or Apostolic, we all maintain and create containers in which each of us dives deep or soars beyond reach. No matter what our beliefs, as human beings part of each one of us protects and holds space for things that we simply could not live well without. And, in my language, that is part of you. And the things you protect from within ? That is the sacred.

Music is one of those sacred things for me.

Ever since I was a college freshman, I’d stream songs while I worked, I played, I talked, and I ate – almost every part of my day touched music in some way. It began with muffled computer speakers and now it’s usually from the soundbar on my living room TV. Some would call this background music, but to me, the soundscapes that have exposed themselves have been essential for my well-being and growth, for my musical wanderings mirror, my theological journeys.

When I was enamored with Sufism, I’d stream “Beat the Retreat” by Richard Thompson, a song so indelibly touched by Sufi thought that I recognized it immediately. I’ll follow the drum …. (two silent beats, Richard slapping the guitar) …. back home to you…. fits right into the canon of the Fools of God. I’d play Richard’s drone, the hollow of his guitar, and fall into a trance as I rode BART, the San Francisco Bay Area’s rapid transit line, back home to You. What You I wasn’t sure, but I certainly felt it.

Later, when Hinduism touched my heart, I found Ashla Bhosle singing along with Michael Stipe in “I Love the Way You Dream.” It grounded me as I wandered through the southern rim of Golden Gate Park, pondering the origins of the words guru and pandit. Sometimes I’d venture into silly realms. I mused on the relationship between pandit and pan dicho – no particular relationship between mentors and the sweet pink and white breakfast breads in the glass cases of my hometown’s Latin supermercados per se, except that they both feed you, albeit in different ways.

These days, I have come home to the Christianity of my youth and each morning listen to Christian and secular music. These songs ground me for the day and offer me the chance to reaffirm how well Christianity fits in with my current worldview. We should love others as Jesus has loved us, wanderers can come home, and there’s an overwhelming never-ending, reckless love of God for all of us.

If I’m being honest, I’ll confess that I dabble in a bit of ancestor worship with that last part: my Dad showed an overwhelming commitment to our relationship as he was dying earlier this year, and it touched me in a deeply spiritual way. I remember Dad by listening to Michael W. Smith sing of God the Father’s love because, in an intuitive way, my biological father is heavenly now too.